ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND THE HUMAN MIND

Joseph M. Mellichamp
The University of Alabama

Nearly a hundred and thirty years ago, Charles Darwin published his
initial work, The Origin of the Species and a dozen years later
a second work, The Descent of Man. Today, Darwin's ideas along
with the views of some of his predecessors and contemporaries form a
significant part of the framework of the Theory of Evolution. The Theory
essentially views man as a genetic accident--a product of chance in time
and space.

Interestingly, we face a very similar situation in the scientific
community today with the advent and maturing of the body of knowledge
called artificial intelligence (AI). There is currently an unprecedented
interest in AI; researchers are making wonderful claims for this
newfound technology while government agencies and business and
industrial organizations are shelling out millions of dollars to acquire
a piece of the action. Don't misunderstand, there are many, many
potential benefits to be gained from AI; in medical diagnostics, in
manufacturing, in mineral exploration, in communications, in space
exploration--in practically every arena of human endeavor.

However, there is a dimension of the research in AI that potentially has
far-reaching implications for the lives of every one of us. The area to
which I refer is, in fact, the theme of the papers in this volume--
whether computer intelligence can, in principle, do all that human
intelligence does. Is the human mind more than a complex computer?
Consider, in this context, just a few of the statements which have been
made by AI researchers:

"The ultimate goal of AI research (which we are very far from
achieving) is to build a person, or more humbly, an animal." [1, p. 7]

"It should now be clear that the difference, in intellectual
terms, between a human being and a computer is one of degree and not
kind." [2, p. 227]

"A person is just a program, too, in a way. We are 'programmed by
our experience.' A computer is a very slow, very spineless human." [5,
p. 52]

"Humans and computers are two species in the genus of information
processing systems." [4, p. 1201

Is this science or science fiction? These statements are not, as some of
my colleagues think, puns; they are very serious statements made by some
of the most prominent scholars in the AI field.

In assessing the impact of such comments, Sowa [6, p. 358] states that
they "... may have a dramatic effect, but they lead to confusion
especially for novices and people outside the AI field." He goes on to
suggest that "they have a mind-numbing effect on experts within the
field." To illustrate how true this is, one of the participants at the
Yale conference disclosed during his talk that he had developed a robot
which acts as though it experiences fear. Before the sessions ended for
the day, the halls were buzzing with graduate students marveling at
Prof. So-and-So's robot which experiences the emotion fear. There is a
vast difference between a human experiencing fear and a machine
responding to external stimuli in a manner that duplicates the human
response--a small detail that was overlooked by the students in
their enthusiasm.

It requires no great intelligence to realize the profound implications
that statements such as these hold for the value of human life. In his
interesting book, Into the Heart of the Mind, Frank Rose has a
chapter entitled, "Should Robots Have Civil Rights?" [41 The narrative
takes an unusual twist about halfway through the chapter when the
question "should humans have civil rights?" is raised. The basic theme
of the chapter is the influence upon society of artificial intelligence,
but much of the discussion concerns problems which will be created by
humanlike machines.

What can be done to ensure that reason and truth prevail in the
unfolding inquiry into the relationship between human intelligence and
machine intelligence? How can we assure that our society and our world
will be shaped by true truth and not speculation? The Yale Conference
was an excellent first step. In fact, Letovsky in describing the
conference for the Al Magazine remarked that it "reminded me of
the debates in England after Darwin's theory first came out." [3, p. 66]
Let the debate continue!